Ericsson’s loss is a US operator’s gain once more as T-Mobile hires Ewaldsson

T-Mobile US wasted little time in snapping up former Ericsson lifer Ulf Ewaldsson after he came on the market, to head up its 5G efforts.

Ewaldsson’s most recent significant position at Ericsson was to head up its struggling Digital Services division. This time last year he became another casualty of Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm’s apparent desire to refresh the executive team by getting rid of some dead wood. He does it gently, however, by moving them to the position of advisor to the CEO for a few months before finally casting them adrift.

Following the well trodden path taken by his former boss Hans Vestberg, Ewaldsson presumably needed little persuasion to escape the Swedish winter and move state-side, although he might not find Washington state to be much of an upgrade weather-wise. He will be reporting into TMUS CTO Neville Ray.

“We are thrilled to share the great news that Ulf is joining our team of amazing leaders at T-Mobile who continue to show the other guys what it takes to win in wireless,” said Ray. “Just look at what we’ve done with 4G wireless! We’ve been the fastest for 19 straight quarters – nearly 5 straight years… and we’re just getting started.

“Adding Ulf’s passion and track record for driving innovation to the Un-carrier mix is going to take us to the next level. Ulf has achieved so many firsts and truly supported the evolution of technology for telecommunications across the globe. Bringing him on board is a total win for T-Mobile and we couldn’t wait to share it! He is going to be the perfect addition to our consumer-first Un-carrier team to drive our 5G evolution strategy!”

Have you noticed how similar to Trump’s tweets the canned quotes from TMUS are? Anyway Ewaldsson, does have good tech pedigree, having been Ericsson’s group CTO for five years before being handed the Digital Services poisoned chalice, so he should be a good person to be running the 5G side of things.